Mirror Image

her. There wasn’t too much of her that was accessible to kiss, but Avery thought that a husband would have found a way to kiss his wife if he had really wanted to.
    She watched his retreating back until it disappeared through the door of her room. Loneliness crept in from all sides to smother her. The only way she could combat it was to think. She spent her waking hours planning how she was going to tell Tate Rutledge the heartbreaking news that she wasn’t who he thought she was. His Carole was no doubt buried in a grave marked Avery Daniels. How would she tell him that?
    How could she tell him that somebody close to him wanted him dead?
    At least a thousand times during the past week, she had tried convincing herself that her ghostly visitor had been a nightmare. Any one of a number of contributing factors could have made her hallucinate. It was easier to believe that the speaker of those malevolent words had been a delusion.
    But she knew better. He had been real. In her mind, his words were as clear as a tropical lagoon. She had memorized them. The sinister tone and inflection were indelibly recorded on her brain. He had meant what he had said. There was no mistaking that.
    He had to have been someone in the Rutledge family because only immediate family was allowed in the intensive care unit. But who? None seemed to show any malice toward Tate; quite the contrary, everyone seemed to adore him.
    She considered each of them: His father? Unthinkable. It was evident that both parents doted on him. Jack? He didn’t appear to harbor any grudges toward his younger brother. Though Eddy wasn’t a blood relation, he was treated like a member of the family, and the camaraderie between Tate and his best friend was plain to see. She had yet to hear Dorothy Rae or Fancy speak, but she was fairly certain the voice she had heard had been masculine.
    None of the voices she had heard recently belonged to her visitor. But how could a stranger have sneaked into her room? The man had been no stranger to Carole; he had spoken to her as a confidante and coconspirator.
    Did Tate realize that his wife was conspiring to have him killed? Did he guess she meant him harm? Was that why he administered comfort and encouragement from behind an invisible barrier? Avery knew he gave her what he was expected to give, but nothing more.
    Lord, she wished she could sit down with Irish and lay out all the components of this tangle, as she often did before tackling a complex story. They would try to piece together the missing elements. Irish possessed almost supernatural insight into human behavior, and she valued his opinion above all others.
    Thinking about the Rutledges had given Avery a splitting headache, so she welcomed the sedative that was injected into her IV that evening to help her sleep. Unlike the constant brilliance of the ICU, only one small night-light was left burning in her room every night.
    Wavering between sleep and consciousness, Avery allowed herself to wonder what would happen if she assumed the role of Carole Rutledge indefinitely. It would postpone Tate’s becoming a widower. Mandy would have a mother’s support during her emotional recuperation. Avery Daniels could perhaps expose an attempted assassin and be hailed a heroine.
    In her mind, she laughed. Irish would think she had gone crazy for sure. He would rant and rave and probably threaten to bend her over his knee and spank her for even thinking up such a preposterous idea.
    Still, it was a provocative one. What a story she would have when the charade was over—politics, human relationships, and intrigue.
    The fantasy lulled her to sleep.

Eight
    She was more nervous than she had been before her first television audition at that dumpy little TV station in Arkansas eight years earlier. With damp palms and a dry throat, she had stood ankle deep in mud and swill, gripping the microphone with bloodless fingers and bluffing her way through an on-location story about a parasite currently affecting swine farmers. Afterward, the news director had drolly reminded her that the disease was affecting the swine, not the farmers. But he had given her the job of field reporter anyway.
    This was an audition, too. Would Mandy detect what no one else had been able to—that the woman behind the battered face was not Carole Rutledge?
    During the day, while the caring, talkative nurses had bathed and dressed her, while the physical therapist had gone through her exercises with her, a